Affilinet Opens ‘Assist’ Functionality Up to Publishers: The Lowdown

Following the news that it would be allowing advertisers to track ‘assists’ for sales on their affiliate programmes, affilinet has delivered a similar feature to its publishers.

A reverse of its ‘Assist’ option for advertisers, which made its way onto the affiliate network’s dashboard last month, sees publishers afforded the luxury of being able to track where they contributed to a purchase without having to be the final referrer.

In a typical use of the technology, a content publisher could see the stage at which they fall in the the consumer’s path to purchase. The popularity of cashback and voucher sites has led to plenty of these affiliates losing out on driving the last click - leaving them out of the picture in a final-touch reward model - but there is now a way for them to demonstrate value as an introducer or otherwise.

Affilinet sees Assist as a way of being able to “improve the transparency” around affiliate marketing and enabling publishers to up their commission.

Granular insight

Assists and attribution are two huge topics in affiliate marketing at present; spurred on by technology that is giving affiliate programme managers a high level of insight into exactly how a consumer engages the channel on their way to converting.

Affilinet has been vocal in demonstrating that members of the ‘longtail’ - i.e the small contributors that collectively drive a considerable amount of programme revenue - aren’t being properly catered for in the current landscape.

In a session at PMI: London last year, UK MD Helen Southgate stressed that certain affiliates were being let down by industry-wide issues concerning payment models and strategies that do not work in their favour.

PerformanceIN’s own investigations into affiliate have unearthed a reliance in some programmes on ‘incentive publishers’, but technologies like Assist could represent a small step in levelling the playing field and ensuring that commission is allocated to any publisher influencing an action.

Networks get data-driven

For affilinet, operating in UK, Germany, Spain, Austria, Switzerland and Austria, the release of its new function for publishers is also about ramping up its capabilities in data capture to bring benefits across the network.

A similar effort is being made by rival network Tradedoubler, who informed PerformanceIN that its deal for German ad tech group Adnologies would result in “smarter results” for its client base.

Southgate, of affilinet, says: “One of our core strategies is increasing the amount of insight and data that we give to publishers to help support them in driving revenue for our advertisers.

“Expanding the affilinet Assist reporting to allow publishers to see where they not only lose out on sales, but also where they are assisted by other affiliates, will hopefully give a more rounded view of their activity and open up new opportunities.”

Assist forms part of several scheduled improvements to affilinet’s reporting for publishers and advertisers, which are set to continue into this year.

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Richard Towey

Richard is a former head of content at PerformanceIN. After many years spent covering developments from the automotive, sports, travel and finance sectors, he eventually turned his full attention to reporting on stories from the fast-evolving world of digital marketing.